1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for managing vehicle (car) maintenance information in a mobile terminal, and in particular, for performing a car care book function in a mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the rapid proliferation of mobile terminals due to their convenient portability, service providers and terminal manufacturers are competing to develop mobile terminals with advanced functions to secure more users. For example, there are mobile terminals offering various functions such as a phone books, games, schedulers, short message services, Internet services, e-mail services, morning call services, electric calculators, etc.
According to the recent statistics, there are about 15,500,000 automobiles and 37,000,000 mobile terminals in Korea alone. In general, car care books, which is a necessity for proper car management, has progressed from traditional notebook types into bankbook types, and further into cyber car care book types.
When using a cyber car care book type manual, a user (i.e., an online member) can store information on car care such as the distance covered, gas (fuel) costs, repair costs, supply expenses, parts expenses etc., and other car management information in an online database, and the online member can then manage and retrieve such information from the database. For example, the member can check the latest inspection date, the record of gas supply, the date and time that supplies and parts were changed and the expected time that parts and supplies must be changed based on the distance covered from the database. Thus, typical inconveniences such as having to manually enter and calculate cost and time of repair are eliminated or substantially reduced.
Cyber car care book type manuals, however, require a user to connect to a website of a cyber car care book type manual and require the user to check management items often. Due to the inconvenience resulting from having to access a website, a user may inadvertently miss an inspection time for proper car care. In addition, because a cyber car care book type manual based on a computer lacks mobility, a user may not input the information for proper car care, such as gas costs, repair costs, etc. into the proper database in a timely fashion.